fred@rdin.UUCP (Fred Maslin) (08/27/83)
c R*p*u Now that Im back on the net for awhile I realize that net.books has fallen into disrepair. When last I looked, there were fertile discussions of any- thing from graphics textbooks to recent and ancient literature. Since we don't get net.poems here at RDI, I'm imploring someone to turn me on to some new authors. Just to show I'm not selfish, here's a seed. My new passion is for the work of Grahame Green. Although for years I thought of him as just another spy novelist like Ludlum or LeCarre (not to disparage their considerable talents), I have found that his perceptions of human nature are quite profound. His characters are very often apathetic in environments where everyone else is involved in one faction or another. Although politics usually figure in his books (Viet Nam under the French in "The Quiet American", Haiti under Papa Doc in "The Comedians"), his principle characters act for personal reasons like desire, fear, the need for security. Heroism is seen as something very abnormal, even mythical which lends credibility to his descriptions of particularly hopeless political situation("The Quiet American" characterized American involvement in Vietnam at least five years before our troops were sent in.). If anyone can recommend another Grahame Green, or anything else, by all means publish. Don't let the world think programmers are myopic. Fred Maslin philabs!rdin!fred
tbray@mprvaxa (08/31/83)
Of course we read... Graham Green->e<-'s stuff keeps getting better as he gets older, all his best stuff dates from post-retirement age. His last book, Don Quixote, is a treat. Often underrated is the comic novel Our Man in Havana. Any collection of Greene short stories is well worth reading. And for anyone who has enjoyed a few of the books, his autobiographies, A Kind of Life and Ways of Escape, are terrific. Other authors worth drawing attention to: R.K. Narayan. Comes from Madras, India, writes small, perfect novels about a small, imaginary Indian city named Malagudi. Some of most finely crafted prose you're likely to run across. Also, dropping his name is worth 50 brownie points in any gathering of literati, as he is 3rd world and obscure as well as being great - due for a Nobel one of these years. Of special note are The Painter of Signs and The Holy Man. Gene Wolfe. Although Wolfe is in fact famous mostly for science fiction, some of his stuff is too good for any genre. Notable are the two non-SF novels Peace and The Devil in a Forest (The latter is based loosely on the Christmas Carol 'Good King Wenceslas'). Also perhaps the finest straight SF novel ever written, The Fifth Head of Cerberus. And one overrated poseur: D.M. Thomas. ...decvax!microsoft!ubc-vision!mprvaxa!tbray Tim Bray